I started college in 1986, EE, but after a year switched to CS in 1987, graduated 1991. Around 1990 or so, I can remember walking around the halls of the main CS building on campus on the way to one of my classes, passing a door labeled "Hypertext Laboratory". I remember thinking, "Hypertext... pffft. That's never going anywhere."
Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
71–80 of 406 posts
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#72My biggest issue with education is the whole "study this, get a job doing that" idea. It's plainly wrong, and it sucks in people who drink the koolaid and think there's an easy route to work. Very little is learned in college that is necessary for general employment. By general I mean just about everything that isn't licensed, like being a doctor. What college does is it throws a bunch of hard but irrelevant subjects…
I agree that university isn’t vocational training.
However, the knowledge is relevant. If you don’t know that some data structure/algorithm/whatever exists, would you know to look for it or what to look for?
Sure you can learn all this by yourself, but you can also learn it at the university.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#73My biggest issue with education is the whole "study this, get a job doing that" idea. It's plainly wrong, and it sucks in people who drink the koolaid and think there's an easy route to work. Very little is learned in college that is necessary for general employment. By general I mean just about everything that isn't licensed, like being a doctor. What college does is it throws a bunch of hard but irrelevant subjects…
Thank your for articulating something I've experienced over the years so clearly.
It's one thing I wish recruiters/HR would understand. I have an advanced college degree in a field that has nothing to do with engineering and I've found that omitting it from my resume actually made the recruitment process a whole lot smoother as a candidate.
Interviews went from inquisition sessions about why I wasn't doing what my graduate degree had "destined" me to do, why I had "given up" on it, how I could relate my academic background to the current job (I don't because I haven't cared for it in years), etc... It's like you're inherently suspicious if you didn't follow the path you took in your 20s all the way to your retirement.
So I stopped making any mentions of my academic creds, and the worse I get now are some condescending lines about how hard I must have worked. Other than that response rate & interviewer's attitude have improved markedly.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#74I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…
Yep. And everyone was afraid of all these drag and drop tools that generated Java code. "You just have to know UML!" was the promise.
I'm reminded of that today in the rare instance when I run into the decision makers that are convinced GUI data engineering tools are the future.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#75I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…
That’s strange, I started studying in 2005 and had planned to go into Comp. Sci. for at least 2 years, yet I had never heard similar sentiment expressed. Germany.
Same here (2005), but in Austria. I think Europe still had to catch up to the US‘ pre-2000 level of „digitalisation“ such that the bubble burst didn’t do that much to our industries.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#76Was this the actual feeling at the time? Or just one reporters perspective, spun into a story. I feel like the ad for $7.95 prime rib is probably a more relevant data point from the past than this article. Edit: Gourmet House: https://www.bismarckcafe.com/blogs/260/remembering-gourmet-h...
I think the article is fine, the title is just pre-WWW clickbait.
This quote seems a fair assessment, but doesn't exactly match the headline:
"There certainly is going to be a need for more and better technical talent in the high-tech industry."
So enrollment dropped from 2.1% to 1.6% after the hot computer jobs market cooled a bit, and reality set-in for several of the students who weren't very technical, and just expected an easy path to a high-paid job. It's been known to happen.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#77The claims in this article, bluntly and simply, are not true: what is described as a 'fad' has grown into one of the hottest professional fields, for decades.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#78I guess today students flee the field because of the image of ads, privacy infringements and fake news and dark patterns on social media.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#79I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…
I went to university a couple years after that and also felt a similar sentiment that it was basically too late to get in on a good career before the industry got outsourced.
Of course then social media happened and everyone and their grandma needed developers so it didn't matter that people were flooding in because there simply wasn't enough labor to go around.
Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)
#80I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…
To be fair, 2002-2003 would have been a pretty rough time to graduate as a developer. The industry hadn’t yet recovered from the whole dot com thing and there were still a million “converted business major” developers on the market who hadn’t yet got the hint that they should go to law school. The advice you got might not have applied to you on the way in. But it certainly applied to all the students those professors…
...and now every business major knows Python